Not sure how this news slipped by us, but now that i’m aware it is time to bring it to you! Viola Davis will play Harriet Tubman in an upcoming HBO movie about the abolitionist, legend and mountain of a woman.

Davis has been in Hollywood for decades, but recently gained the media’s spotlight with her role in the hit show How To Get Away with Murder. The show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the woman who owns Thursday night television with Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and Murder.

The movie about Tubman will be based on the biography Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, by historian Kate Clifford Larson, according to an HBO press release.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland. Not many realize slavery was prominent in the North as well. This fact seems to be washed out of the history books, but it is true.

She later escaped in 1849 and led countless slaves to freedom along her Underground Railroad.

The railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses along the way to freedom.

Tubman is famous for saying, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if they only knew they were slaves.”

We are excited to see Davis put her stamp on the legend known as Harriet Tubman, but a bit disappointed the movie will be done on HBO and directed by Steven Spielberg. Not that either the network or Spielberg isn’t worthy or capable of pulling off a great movie, but it would be great to see black people interested enough in black history that understand it is important to tell our own stories, from our perspectives.

Nevertheless, I will be watching and hoping this story will reach other generation of young people to remind them to never give up and never stop fighting. Because regardless of the comforts this society has afforded us, we are not free.

We are still under siege and cannot stop until we control our destiny and future.